Tenfold
by PunkPinkPower
Summary: In the end, it was Allison who made the final push to come home. They had all dropped hints when the war had ended. It was time to settle down and rest, Scott had said offhandedly. They needed a place to raise their pups, Jackson had argued. But it was Allison who, one cool night in the Nevada desert, had said, "I think it's time to go home."


Notes: I am not even sure what this is. Basically, after I finished Season 1 of Teen Wolf, I was really looking forward to all the pack feels we might get in season 2, and then that didn't happen, and my brain decided that it should, dammit. So this goes AU after the end of season 1. It mentions some stuff that happens in season 2, but I'm vague about it. This is my first TW fic, and of course it would be non-cannon future fic, *eyeroll*. Oh, who am I kidding, just go enjoy the pack feels and ignore that gapping canon holes. 3 A huge shout out and thank you to Rivulet027 for the beta and the encouragement. I'd never have found the courage to post it without her!

* * *

He can see them from miles away, even in the dark of the night, which is quickly giving way to the early dawn. The black clad hunter, toying with her smallest crossbow, leaned back docily against the sleek black Camaro. Lydia, nursing her pup in the backseat of the large Sudan, having abstained from the hunt again. Jacksons mate, cooing at the slightly older pup of Scotts.

The bubbles the little boy blows echoes in his too-loud ears like fireworks.

And then there's Stiles, sitting on the ground, his head leaned back like he's listening for them, like he knows they're coming. Half asleep, half awake, grinning.

The children they carry with them begin to stir when they get within range of the rest of the pack, and Victoria lifts her sleepy head from his shoulder to mumble something about "Ma's god dammed perfume".

He hears a low growl from behind, as Scott commands "language" at the 12 year old. Then she's out again, fast asleep on Derek's shoulder.

It's the second hunt where it's only been the three of them, Jackson, Scott, and himself, to wrangle the three girls. Lydia hasn't come since her pup was born, but Jackson's mate Danika used to come. Until she announced that she was expecting, too, and started staying behind. It's a task, keeping the three young wolves from injuring themselves as they run wild in the night. And it's dangerous, he knows, since they aren't on any kind of territory they know. It keeps him on full alert, ready to protect the pups from hunters or other wolves or worse. By the end of the night, Derek is always grateful that they sleep on the way back, allowing themselves to be carried and letting the exhausted men walk back without talk of rainbows, butterflies and princesses.

Allison see's them coming first, and backs off the car with a grin. When they reach them, Scott hands off Rebecca gratefully, gives his mate a kiss, and then flops into the front seat of the Sedan and shuts off like a light, his snores coming before anyone can say a word.

"How was it?" Allison asks, cradling her daughter in her arms. Behind him, Jackson hands Laura off to Stiles, and she wakes up enough to nuzzle her human father.

"Competitive," Derek grumbles, hauling the packs eldest offspring, Victoria, off his back and into the back of the Camaro. She doesn't stir a bit.

Allison grins at him. "Surprise, surprise," she teases, before carrying Rebecca back to the Sedan, to join Scott and their toddler.

Stiles is waiting to tuck Laura into the backseat next to Victoria, but Derek walks over and takes her from him easily. He gives his mate a quick nuzzle before climbing into the backseat himself, nestling himself between his barely-still-pups, and begins to doze off.

He feels the car doors shut, the engines roar to life, and then they're back on their way. _Home,_ Derek thinks to himself with a grin, before he lets sleep claim him.

* * *

"Yuck," are the first words spoken in the Hale house after ten years of dormancy. "This place is a wreck."

"Hey," Allison ruffles Victoria's wild blonde hair as she comes up behind her and sets a bag down. "We've stayed in worse."

Victoria gives her a look that clearly begs to differ, but she says nothing, instead turning a look back to him.

Derek just grins, setting down a light bag as Lydia comes in behind him, holding Isaiah and looking grim. They all look a little bit weary as they enter the house, noses wrinkling up at the smell of charcoal, burnt rubbish, and familiar scents from years ago.

"I'm not the one who insisted we come back," Derek reminds the pack gently, and everyone starts looking a bit sheepish.

Everyone but Danika, in her long flowing purple dress, her dark hair pulled back with yellow ribbons and flower pins. She steps into the house like she knows it, feeling the walls with one hand, keeping the other on her stomach. "Such… history," she says after a moment, placing a hand on the railing of the stairs. "So much life, and so much death… what an anchor."

Derek knows exactly what she means. He can feel the walls around him, the comfort and the danger they've represented to him in the past, and the strange familiarity they hold now.

"That's enough mumbo-jumbo out of you," Jackson says, coming forward and taking his wolf born mates hand, leading her off into the other rooms, presumably on a tour.

Laura, his daughter, is sniffing around like she can feel it too, and Derek wonders how much history he passed onto her, how much she knows of what happened, and how much she will know. He wonders if this place will ever be home to her like it was to him.

For the last 7 years, she's never had a home outside the word pack. None of them have, really. She was born in the backwoods of Missouri, with help from another pack and some in-vitro. He hadn't been all for it at the time, not when they were so destitute, a traveling pack with no stake in territory, with a young pup and another already on the way. But Stiles had wanted her so badly… Derek hadn't been able to refuse him when he'd found a human pack member willing to take on the challenge.

They'd moved on as soon as she was old enough to crawl, though, and they'd never stayed anywhere for too long. Bouncing through other packs hospitalities or renting houses in areas with no other wolves, it was the war that had driven them to leave and keep on the move. _In order to keep the pack safe,_ Derek reminds himself. Safe from the alphas who roamed through Beacon Hills. Safe from the alphas who had followed them for months, until Derek had rallied the allies into making a stand against them. Safe from the fates of so many of their friends.

After Erica and Boyd, they knew they'd never be safe. Not when the Argents were dead set on revenge. Not when the alpha pack had their scent. It was that and the desire for revenge that had spurred them on, Derek's own instincts screaming against running, but his higher calling as their alpha to protect them from harm had won out.

He hadn't entirely succeeded. With that, he immediately thinks of Isaac, and he tries not to. Isaac, who had suffered so much already. Isaac, who Derek let down.

Lydia grabs onto Derek's hand, giving it a squeeze before saying, "I think we should plant a garden," and pulling him back into the present, back into the Hale house, back to Beacon Hills.

"I think we're going to need to rebuild the house before we start thinking about decorating," Scott quips, pushing at a rotten beam that falls over, cascading into a pile of dust which 9-year-old Rebecca backs away from, grumbling.

"Alright girls," Allison says, turning with hands on hips. "Who feels like cleaning?"

The three young girls moan in unison, instantaneous complaints coming forward at once.

"I cleaned the last house before we left!"

"We always get stuck doing the gross stuff."

"I'm still tired…"

Allison continues staring them down, until finally it's Victoria who comes forward. She has never had trouble challenging Allison on anything, but it's clear in her stance how much she respects her, their resident faux den mother, how much the words that come out of her mouth actually _mean_. "Ma," she demands, in her toughest ultimatum voice, "we're not doing any kind of manual labor until we get some lunch."

The other two girls cross their arms, mimicking their leader's strong behavior, standing in resistance against the packs fearless mother. Allison raises a careful eyebrow at Victoria before saying, "Only if you take the boys with you."

Thinking this fair, Victoria goes for Deacon, grabbing him out of Scott's arms, and Laura heads for Isaiah, and the five pups disappear out the door, back to the car with the cooler filled with lunchables.

Stiles sighs at his side. "She's gonna make one heck-of-an alpha," he says fondly.

Derek smirks, reaching over to give him a kiss before turning his attention to the ill-treated house.

* * *

In the end, it was Allison who made the final push to come home. They had all dropped hints when the war had ended. It was time to settle down and rest, Scott had said offhandedly. They needed a place to raise their pups, Jackson had argued. There weren't any more great battles to fight, Stiles had insisted. They should honor at least some of their traditions, Lydia had reasoned.

But it was Allison who, one cool night in the Nevada desert, had said, "I think it's time to go home."

"But we are home," Rebecca had said from her lap, putting down her book. She spoke, of course, of the small adobe house they'd lived in for little more than a year there.

Allison lovingly stroked the girl's hair before answering to the quiet group at large, "I mean our real home. Back to Beacon Hills."

Which was silly, really. It was hardly her home. Allison had only lived there two years before the pack had moved, and she with it. Before she'd become pack too, really.

But to the rest of them, Beacon Hills was an epicenter. The focal point of their short lives, where most of them had been born and raised, and had expected to stay until Derek's uncle had invaded their lives with all of his craziness. It was where Derek had hoped to rebuild a real pack, rebuild his home, and his life.

But those plans had been laid to rest a long time ago, as far as he was concerned. With the death of his sister, he'd never thought having a pack would mean anything to him again, but this pack, his pack, had proved him wrong. It didn't matter where they went, and he knew that. As long as they were together.

They certainly weren't living badly, not with the way Stiles and Jackson had invested the rest of Derek's fortune and made back their money 6 times over. They had enough to live the way they liked for as long as they liked, anywhere the liked.

But as it turned out, they all liked Beacon Hills. No one said anything at first, but as the days wore on, Derek could feel each of them longing to return, to come home at last to the place where it had all begun.

And of course, there were the pups to think of. Victoria, Rebecca, Laura, Deacon and Isaiah deserved some stability as they began to mature, and Derek knew it would help when it really came time for them to embrace their wolf sides. They needed an anchor, and the pack needed a home.

And so they'd found themselves on one last migration, heading home at last. Derek only hoped that this time, his homecoming might be a little more underwhelming.

Allison and Danika clear out one of the rooms for the pack to crowd into that night while Jackson, Derek, Scott, and Stiles assess what will have to be done to make the house livable. The pups play in the backyard, or at least where the backyard will be, and Lydia disappears, off into the woods to look for unmistakable spirals in the ground, off to search for the graves of Erica and Boyd. It's a journey they'll all make, eventually, but Lydia has been thinking of nothing else since…

Since Isaiah.

The boy is not yet a year old, but he is her spitting image. Which is good, Derek thinks, since no one has any idea who the father is. Lydia had disappeared one night, and had returned the next day reeking of hormones and cheep liquor and sex; pregnant. The pack had, of course, been thrilled for her, as she seemed to be, but it was not until the boy was born and she announced his name that any of them began to see how much the packs history meant to her. Derek couldn't help but wonder if it was her longing to hold _that_ boy in her arms again that gave her the desire for a pup of her own.

She was convinced, she told them one night, that she had no predestined mate like the rest of them. That her mate had likely been killed in the war, that it was something she felt deep down, that she was alone. And that was no reason, she said, to put the rest of her life on hold.

Nobody asked if Lydia thought her mate might have been Isaac.

When it's determined that it will take more than one or two trips to the hardware store to fix up the house, Stiles suggests hiring someone to do the work for them, and letting the family live somewhere else until it's done.

Scott agrees, but Jackson is uncomfortable with this, as is Derek. Because they all know that 'somewhere else' will probably be splitting up and staying with family none of them has seen in years. Derek simply doesn't want to split the pack up, but Jackson says he doesn't trust humans to come in and rebuild without messing it up. Stiles gets flustered, and Jackson amends that of course he doesn't mean Stiles or Allison, as they're pack, and Scott sooths the situation by making a quip about Jackson's sudden human prejudice.

"Alright," Derek growls, after listening to them snap back and forth for a few minutes. "We'll stay here tonight, and in the morning Stiles and I will go hire someone to do the foundation and the re-structuring. When we know how long it will take, we'll figure out where the pack goes."

It makes for an uneasy night, as they all pile in what will eventually be the living room, and there are discussions of remodeling, paint colors, bathroom fixtures and school selection. What's really on everyone's mind, though, is the prospect of splitting up for a while, of being close but not being together, of seeing family and friends not even spoken of for years.

Victoria is uncomfortable the whole night, and she comes over to Derek and climbs on top of him, snuggling into the assurance they she is a valid member of the pack, if not by blood, and that she will stay with Derek no matter what. Derek immediately foresees a problem in that she'll of course want to stay with Allison, too, but Derek has a feeling Scott and Allison will stay with Scott's mom, while Derek, Stiles, Laura and Victoria will be with Stiles' father.

"Don't like it," she mutters to him quietly.

"You will," he promises gently, but there's a tone in his voice of _alpha_, and its maybe a bit of a command to behave. She huffs dejectedly, and Derek pets her hair until she falls asleep.

Victoria was happenstance. Their first pup, she'd been adopted into the pack when they'd found her alone and crying in a wrecked house that smelt of wolves and hunters and death. Her entire pack, over twenty wolves, had been killed, leaving her utterly alone in the world.

"Absolutely not," Derek had barked, when Allison and Lydia had looked at him with pleading eyes, cradling the girl in their arms. "We're not kidnapping a little girl."

"Who's going to look after her?" Stiles had insisted. "Her entire pack is gone, Derek. You know what that's like." And it hurt, when he said it, but Derek's wolf ignored it completely.

"It's not happening," he'd said again, watching the little girl cling to Allison with tears in her eyes. "If she has relatives, allies of this pack, and they go looking for her and find out we took her, do you have any idea what will happen?"

"We'll tell them we were just trying to protect her and hand her over to them," Scott said calmly, clearly not understanding what he's saying. It's treason, absolute forfeiture of safety, to overstep a tribe's claim on their children. They had enough enemies already.

"But really," Isaac had said, piping up for the first time in days, "what are the odds that anyone will come to find her?"

"We're not leaving her for dead," Jackson agreed, hurt and anger and grief in his voice.

"This isn't a democracy!" Derek had snarled at them. "I'm not risking all of our lives for a child the hunter's wouldn't waste a bullet on!"

Allison had stormed out of the house with the girl at that, and it had taken two hours of coaxing to get her to come out of the locked car with the child. It was her maternal instincts kicking in, Derek knew, due to her own early pregnancy, but it was something else, too. Some debt she felt she owed the girl because it had been _hunters_ who had taken her family. Hunters she was probably related to, at that. He and Isaac had spent the time giving the rest of the girls pack a proper burial, and by the time they'd come back into the house the pack was sleeping, the girl cradled in Allison's arms.

That is, until she had disentangled herself from Allison and come to him, cautiously worming her way next to the alpha, and then latching onto his side and falling into a peaceful sleep. He had sat, jaw clenched, refusing to give in until Allison had woken up and looked over, a smug grin on her face.

"I think her dad was the alpha," she whispered, so as not to wake the little girl. Derek just gritted his teeth at her, annoyed and indignant and his resolve completely melting.

Allison rolled her eyes, turning over to go back to sleep. The little girl had eventually collapsed into his lap, snoring the snores of someone who hadn't slept in days, who had not felt safe enough to sleep, whose trauma had been so severe that only an alpha could be trusted now.

In the morning, Stiles found her birth certificate in a lock box, and that was it. Her name was Victoria, and she was pack.

And she had insisted, from that point on, on calling Derek 'Da' and Allison 'Ma'. To their endless aggravation.

Stiles and Scott, on the other hand, had made no shortage of jokes, fully secure in their relationships, that the first child of the pack belonged to Derek and Allison.

Derek is brought out of his thoughts again by Stiles, who curls up next to them, his head on Derek's shoulder. Until a few moments ago, he and Jackson had been trading ideas about where to next invest their remaining money. But conversation in the room is dying down as all of pups drift off to sleep after a long day of travel, and the adults, wolf and human alike, enjoy the small amount of quiet they get when the chattering noise of kids finally stills.

Stiles nuzzles into his neck, and Derek lets out a contented noise. He vaguely wonders where Laura has gone, but thinks she must be curled up with Danika and Jackson again, a new favorite habit of hers. Stiles reaches out and takes Derek's hand before trying to fall asleep himself, and as the soft metal of Stiles' ring touches Derek's skin, he suddenly dreads the coming morning.

Because morning means all sorts of renewed responsibilities, and the very likely scenario that he will have to face Sheriff Stilinski, revealing not only that _he_ is the main reason Stiles came with the pack when they left 10 years ago, but that they have a child together, and Derek just hopes that Laura's sweet face is enough to soften the old Sheriff and keep him from shooting Derek.

He fully expects to get shot, though.

* * *

He wakes early, before anyone else is even stirring, places Victoria in Stiles's arms and stealthily exits the house. He takes his time surveying the property, going over every inch of their reclaimed territory, sniffing out unfamiliar scents.

He smells stupid drunk teenagers, the kind his pack used to be when they were here before. He smells plenty of wild animals and game, and somewhere in the distance there is a humming that indicates an electric fence has been put up. He wonders if its purpose is to keep things in, or out.

Then there's the distant smell of old gun powder, of dried blood and mud. He spends a long time waiting, listening for any sign that those smells are newer than they should be, and when he is finally confidant that they are as harmless as they are old, he starts marking the territory for the kids.

It takes him the better part of an hour to circle the house an acre on each side, marking trees and fence posts. It's a clear sign for any wolf going in or out, though with a grin Derek thinks Stiles would rather put up a "Welcome to Werewolf Territory" sign in bright red letters.

When he's done it's just barely dawn, so he goes on a coffee trip into town. It doesn't surprise him, the first time he hears an old woman whisper to her friend, "Isn't that Derek Hale?" but he had hoped not to be the immediate topic of conversation. It was a futile hope, he knows. After all, the Hales were like Beacon Hills urban legend. First the fire, and then Derek Hale: Notorious Mass Murderer, and then he was sure their sudden disappearance had been no short topic of conversation, either. It didn't take much to cause a stir in small towns, and Derek had done it enough to know he'd never be just another anonymous citizen of Beacon Hills.

Laura is waiting on the steps for him when he gets back, her long dark hair up in a messy bun, her shoes nowhere in sight. He sits down next to her, sipping his coffee, and she peaks into the bag of pastries he has brought. She pulls out a jelly donut and munches contentedly, and they watch the sun rise high into the sky together, the only two early risers in the pack.

"How did they die?" She wonders in a casual tone, and Derek gives her a sidelong glance. They both know the 'they' she refers to.

"Fire," he answers, and she nods. "And hunters."

Laura lets out a little shiver, her brow furrowed, looking just like him. "Are we going to stay here? I mean _really_ stay here."

Derek shrugs, unwilling to make any long-term commitments he won't be able to keep. There are too many unknowns to promise anything.

"I think they'd want us to." She says quietly, and she finishes the donut and leans against his side.

Then its chaos as Isaiah starts crying and the whole house wakes up, grabbing coffees with relieved thank you's, and the kids digging into the rest of the donuts, and everyone's nervous energy permeating the air.

He's anxious to take Stiles and leave, and let the pack calm down and disperse, but that doesn't quite happen. Because just as Stiles is pulling on his jacket and the two of them are griping back and forth about morning routines, Derek hears a car coming their way.

Victoria, Laura and Rebecca clamor inside to alert him, as if he doesn't already know, and by the time they step out onto the porch, a cop car is pulling up into the drive next to the Camaro.

Out steps Sheriff Stilinski, and Stiles runs towards him, asking, "How did you know?"

"What?" The Sheriff asks, his voice thick with emotion and something that might be amusement if he wasn't so close to tears. "You think Derek-freaking-Hale can set foot in town without alerting the media?"

The whole pack snickers amusedly, but Derek's teeth are on edge at the use of his name as an insult. It doesn't stay that way for long though, because then Stiles and his dad are hugging, and crying, and the girls are all sniffling at this display. Save for Victoria, who crowds in next to him with a frown, as though she feels the need to protect him from this unknown man who has insulted her alpha on his own territory. As though she could.

The temptation to use her as a shield from Sheriff Stilinski's eventual glare of death in stronger than it ought to be.

* * *

Derek isn't sure how it happened, exactly. It's another one of those times where everyone seems to assume that they don't need to ask him for something, or that his permission is automatic with the arrival of Stiles' father, but somehow, by that afternoon the Hale house is filled to the brim with every pack members Beacon Hills relatives.

Scott's mother sits with her arm around Allison and they go on and on about how handsome their baby boy is. Jackson's family is interrogating Danika in as friendly a way as possible, while Lydia's parents seem be incredibly surprised that her baby is not, in fact, Jackson's son. Soon, even non-family is showing up tentatively, and Danny throws his arms around Lydia and Jackson like they've come back from the dead.

He supposes he should be grateful, because this distraction has not given Stiles's father much time to interrogate him or try to hurt him, as he's so incredibly smitten with Laura that he can hardly tear himself away from her. At the same time, all of Derek's sense are on edge as the packs territory is invaded and overrun by people who are being generally rude and asking too many questions and suggesting _things_ that neither Derek or his wolf like.

At this rate, Derek is just thanking his stars that the Argents haven't shown up to join in the reunion.

He handles this invasion a lot better than he might've in the past. He tries to make polite conversation with everyone while still stacking his silent claim that this is his pack, and these are his pack members, and no, thank you, they won't be splitting up anytime soon. Because Derek has changed his mind completely. He's absolutely not okay with the idea of the pack being split for even a second, and he can tell that all of his beta's are aware of it, because they all decline invitations. He doesn't know exactly what they'll do yet, or where they'll live until the house is rebuilt, but he's certain of one thing- none of these usurpers are going to take even a single member of his pack away.

And with this firmly in mind, he finally finds the time to talk to Stiles and his father, and Laura jumps up into his arms and starts rattling on about how Papa Stilinski is going to spoil her rotten, and to his surprise, there isn't even a hint of sarcasm or anger or aggression in the Sheriffs voice when he says "I'm so glad you decided to come home," and he claps Derek on the back like he's his son, too.

Like he's known why they left all along.

Derek eyes Melissa McCall with suspicion, but Scott gives him a shrug behind her like he's saying, "Well, so what?"

So what, indeed.

* * *

It takes 8 months to completely rebuild the Hale house, but it's livable by month 5, so the pack spends 5 months living in outlet apartments in town while they wait. Together.

And when they move back in, when there is a solid wood floor and actual walls and even a roof, it's not entirely like coming home. Because Derek had deliberately made this house different from the one he grew up in, had made it stronger, had wanted it to hold new memories along with the old.

But it has its similarities. Even when Lydia paints the kitchen bright yellow, the kind that makes everyone avoid it in the early morning before they've had coffee, Derek can still almost see his father at the stove, cooking pancakes. He can sit at the dining room table that Stiles picks up from an outlet store and run his fingers over it, feeling the marks that aren't actually there that he'd made as an angry kid.

And sometimes when he's checking over the house at night, making sure everyone is where they should be before he crawls into bed with his mate, he feels the house creak like it used to when he and his sister would sneak down the stairs for a midnight run, and he flashes back ever so briefly to that time, when it was all simple, when it all seemed like it would go on forever.

Lydia keeps true to her word, and while the boys spend a lot of time adding final things to the house like sound proof doors and bullet proof windows, she and Danika work in the backyard, tilling the ground with their claws and labeling rows, and by the time Danika goes into labor, the first flowers are starting to bloom.

And when Danika gives birth to a son when the house is nearly finished, a son she and Jackson name Caleb after her father, the entire pack has settled into a complete routine of safety and love and family and home without even having noticed. They pile in around her and Jackson and the baby, and the girls wretch backwards when the baby throws up, and Lydia laughs wickedly as Allison cleans Danika's hair, and Stiles is clinging to Derek's hand happily while trading ugly baby jokes with Scott. Derek knows he's going to have to talk Stiles out of another one, but he isn't sure how yet.

It smells like new baby and protective hormones for a month after he's born, and Derek starts to feel at ease. Because it's been months, and he's starting to understand what his father felt as an alpha. It's not all about fighting off intruders and keeping his pack in line and securing a place to sleep. It's also about enjoying his pack, and letting the happiness roll off him in waves that they can pick up on. It's about watching the pack grow up together, and it doesn't always have to be a battle.

Of course, there are still those nights where his mind wanders, and he finds himself threatening harm against anyone who would ever dare lay a hand on any member of his pack, but Stiles is always there to sooth away his overprotective streaks with kisses and promises of loyalty and hints of expanding the pack. Sometimes Derek lets him get away with it, but others he rolls his eyes and asks "Really? More?" Because all the pups are their kids, and Derek isn't sure he can stretch him paternal love much farther.

And Stiles just shrugs like he doesn't care even though he's absolutely already made up his stubborn little mind. And Derek sighs and distracts him as best he can.

In August, they enroll the girls in Beacon Hills Elementary, and Stiles absolutely reeks of pride and smugness when they come home everyday complaining of boredom because Stiles has already taught them far beyond their grade levels.

The garden blooms and grows, and Lydia spends a good deal of time teaching the pups how to work in it, how to feel connected to the earth, and how to not sneeze at the smell of the flowers. Allison starts bringing clippings inside and sets them on the kitchen table, and the soft smells overwhelm the whole house.

Derek sits with them outside most of the time, watching the pack at play. Sometimes, when he's tired and the sun is warm on his skin, he catches glimpses of Allison in the garden and for a moment thinks she could be his mother, hair pulled high and smile bright, calling out to him. He watches Laura chase Deacon though the yard as the small boy learns to run before he really learns to walk, and they remind him of two other young pup at play here decades ago.

Of course, when he opens his eyes, he sees that Allison is not his mother, and the pups are not former versions of himself and his sister. It's bittersweet, watching the memories overlap the present, but Derek doesn't mind. Victoria comes and grabs his hand, insisting he come and push them on the swings that Jackson has built them, and he does without hesitation.

Stiles and Danika cook giant meals for the family using homegrown vegetables and fresh game Derek brings them, and Sheriff Stilinski is a regular visitor, bringing all the kids presents every time he comes by.

Then Victoria is turning 13, and the whole pack is preparing her for her first full moon, and sure enough there are brand new scratches in the walls of the house after.

Derek doesn't let them paint over them or even try to cover them up, though. He runs his fingers over them and leaves them be, a reminder for Victoria, who starts working so hard to control her wolf that she reminds him of himself at that age, and he keeps them for another reason too.

Because it's home, and there's no denying the baggage that it carries, and the history that it brings up at every possible moment. And he wants Victoria to remember that, when he's old and she becomes the Alpha and takes over the pack. He wants her to have that certainty, that history.

* * *

In the end, it's Derek who is the happiest to be home. It's Derek who extols the values of history and family and pack. It's Derek who is usually found at the bottom of a puppy pile beneath the children. It's Derek who goes to bed last and wakes first, savoring every night and morning in this place.

It's Scott, though, who calls him on it one night in the fading light as they get ready for a hunt with the whole of the pack.

"Sometimes it's hard to believe we all used to be so young," he says, watching the kids play around and bare their fangs at each other in-between laughter.

"I believe it," Derek jokes sarcastically, because he'd been there. He'd seen it.

Scott just gives him this weird look, tilting his head. "It's good, you know, that you finally get to make up on all that lost time."

Derek gives him a neutral stare, flashes his eyes once for effect.

"I'm grateful, obviously, because you saved me, and all of us. But sometimes I'm sorry you had to lose so much to do it." Scott finishes, and he looks away, maybe embarrassed like he usually gets when he has to say anything that isn't idle banter to Derek.

Derek just steps forward, places a firm hand on Scotts shoulder, and gives it a squeeze. _Got it all back, tenfold,_ Derek thinks, but he doesn't say it. He thinks Scott already knows.

He drops his hand and the pack moves around him, following him into the night, into the forest, into the unknown as they always have. The pups surge forward, Victoria transforming and the others running full on, and Derek lets his wolf take over, and howls into the night.

When the pack echoes him, the sound is amplified. _Tenfold,_ Derek thinks with a grin.


End file.
